Good morning. My name is Dr. Marie Ego and I am the Justice and Peace Coordinator with the Sisters of Loretto/Loretto Community in Denver, Colorado. Our community owns 11,990 shares in PepsiCo.

This year, we are voting in favor of the Right to Water Policy – proxy item number five. This resolution was proposed by the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and NorthStar Asset Management. It asks your corporation to develop a policy articulating respect for and commitment to the human right to water.

In response to this resolution, Pepsi states that as a signatory of the United Nations CEO Water Mandate, it is working globally to help address water issues. Pepsi has played a lead role in this voluntary initiative that is promoted as a way for corporations to make progress in protecting water resources. But this so-called mandate lacks enforcement, is fraught with conflicts of interest and risks implicating the U.N. in corporate greenwashing. That is why more than 125 public interest leaders from 35 countries have challenged it as a “thinly veiled public relations effort.” Corporations do not define the human right to water, societies do, and initiatives like the CEO Water Mandate help to subvert that right.

This resolution instead calls on PepsiCo to respect the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – and with that the democratic process of establishing these rights.

People in Colorado, where I live, have frequently felt the pinch of not enough water.   Other parts of the planet feel more than a pinch. I lived in Ghana, West Africa, for 18 years and water was a constant concern and worry.  Rarely did we get enough water to fill the overhead tank.  Most of the time, our water ran for only an hour or two and only in the middle of the night.  We had four large plastic barrels that we filled, when the water ran, for bathing, cleaning, washing clothes and dishes, as well as flushing toilets.  Often the barrels had to last over a week or until it rained and we caught run off from the roof.  We also filled several 4-gallon closed containers, which we used for drinking. Then we had to boil the water for more than 10 minutes, filter it and put it into smaller closed containers.  We were fortunate, as many people stood in long lines to fill buckets or basins at a common tap; very few boiled their water and many were frequently sick from water-borne disease.

With the advent of bottled and bagged water in Ghana the problems worsened.  To buy water was very expensive:  one liter of bottled water costs more than half a day’s wage for a laborer who needs to drink 3 to 5 liters a day just to replace fluids.  Many bottles and baggies ended up as trash in the streets.  Influential people who could afford to buy water did not pressure the government to provide good water to the general population, so the overall availability of clean drinking water decreased. While that is not yet the case in the USA, it is the situation in many poor countries. We as a society cannot afford this two-tiered system.

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My community, the Sisters of Loretto/Loretto Community, has joined the Think Outside the Bottle campaign and has pledged to refrain from the purchase of commercial bottled water in order to make safe, clean and affordable water available to the world’s population. We are also concerned about the effects of bottles clogging landfills and the effects on many people worldwide whose way of life is changing due to bottled water.  We want to become a commercially-bottled-water-free zone.

Just two weeks ago I attended the Justice and Peace Coordinators meeting with nine other religious congregations in the Midwest. As sisters spoke it became apparent that bottled water, and the growing corporate control of water, is a common concern. 

However, for those who wish to purchase water in bottles we feel it is important that they know where the water comes from and the quality of that water. Forty percent of all commercial bottled water comes right out of the tap. Most people do not know what they are buying and do not know how bottled water impacts local water sources.

I would like to share this thought with you: “If you want really great bottled water . . . all you need is the bottle.”  This statement comes from the water utility of Louisville, KY. 

As share holders we were pleased to know that company management has begun putting the water source on bottles. However, we are concerned that our corporation is promoting questionable initiatives focused more on public relations than on improving people’s access to water, while simultaneously rejecting calls for the recognition of the human right to water.

When will our corporation respect people’s priority access to water and cease exploiting water resources for profit without regard for the impact on consumers, the environment and public water systems?”

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